Friday, July 22, 2011

Earliest question mark found in Syriac?

ARAMAIC WATCH:
The riddle of the Syriac double dot: it’s the world’s earliest question mark

Manuscripts written in Syriac, an ancient language of the Middle East, are peppered with mysterious dots. Among them is the vertical double dot or zagwa elaya. A Cambridge academic thinks that the zagwa elaya is the world’s earliest question mark.


I’d describe it as a significant footnote in the history of writing."
—Dr Chip Coakley

Cambridge University manuscript specialist, Dr Chip Coakley has identified what may be the world’s earliest example of a question mark. The symbol in question is two dots, one above the other, similar in appearance to a colon, rather than the familiar squiggle of the modern question mark. The double dot symbol appears in Syriac manuscripts of the Bible dating back to the fifth century.

[...]
Questions are sometimes marked in Semitic languages by prefixed particles — in Hebrew and Arabic, for example. But this is a punctuation mark, not a word or particle. A salutary reminder of how much we still don't know about ancient languages.